The Raining of the Stars
by Maximum Dusk
Summary: I glimpse the sky, and I can't help but think - "shouldn't it be red? The brightest flame, a sheath for silver clotted clouds?". But if I let that sink, if I let that fester - suddenly the world is an illusion, a lie. The stars rain, and I fall. My one tie to Earth? A Time Lord. And Ponds. "Everybody knows that everybody dies... But not today. Certainly not for them" - Doctor/OC
1. Prologue

**A/N: Hi guys! This is my first venture into the Doctor Who world, a Doctor/OC story (sorry had to give it a try, shit fuck Doctor/Rose shippers and Doctor/River shippers - I ship them too but yeah had to give this a twirl) and I'm still not entirely sure whether this will be continued or not. It really depends on the response and my schedule/laziness. Nevertheless I hope you like this, and please review!**

**P.S I'm sorry for the surprisingly massive prologue – I didn't want to have, like, three prologues, that's just silly. **

**DISCLAIMER: I do not own Doctor Who, as I obviously do not personify the spirit of the BBC, nor do I appear to have the visage of a man – as Steven Moffat obviously is one. All characters, places and such belong to the Who-universe, and all I do own are the changes I make for the plot and personal amusement, my interpretation of Gallifrey (with a bit of artistic licence taken. Sorry, I made up those constellations. Sue me.) and my original character, who will eventually be called Reylah Mallard.**

…

Prologue

_I remember the sky. A warm, flickering sheath of fire housing the little splattering of grey, frosted clouds, speckling into the distance like a shower of glittering, transient stars. I remember the ground – so parched, and yet flourishing with fields of red, elongated grass, soft as down feathers – a cradle, nurturing our species since the days of old, when time was unmalleable, static, wherein we grew – learnt to _feel _the spinning of the earth, the stars and all the realms beyond the light of our understanding. The shining constellations of Arvaxior, the Warrior of the Old Space, Calcassin, the Shepherd of Knowledge Past Won, and Soirsiviel, the Matron Stars of Strength and Common Sense, glisten, undeterred by the burnt-orange hue of the night, like the brightest jewels in all of the seven systems, radiating from the far-out entrails of the galaxy. I remember the two suns, rising and setting like a two-ruby dream – one making the mountain-caps shimmer in a wave of rippling waves, whilst the other heralded the morning with a pilgrimage of fire, further spurned through the musical calling of wild birds, fed with a bright illusion of burning embers, like a phoenix. _

_I remember the never-ending mountains of Solace and Solitude, twisting into the sky like spires of desert sand topped with smooth, running rivers of frozen ice, reflecting the illumination of the suns and stars. Oh how the rivers _ran_, rippling away into the distance like the choppy waves of a violent sea, promising a beautiful ferocity that cannot be measured in words alone. I remember the gorgeous flowers that dotted the red, grassy fields of the land, like the daisy, and – oh, the Schlenk blossom, a five-petal vision of golden vitality spreading the strongest perfume of all, putting all who smell it under the greatest spell of wonder and romance. I remember the red, brown, purple and gold stones nestled between the climbing vines of an old, ancient, beautiful tree that had predated even time itself. And not just that tree, but ceaseless others – oh, how the twisted, knotted, gnarled bones of life stretched out of the earth, bearing the most sacred of treasures – delicate, intricate, and ceaselessly beautiful diamond-shaped leaves, glinting like a kaleidoscope of silver, fluttering wings, alight with the fire of the two suns, and swinging down like a cascade of falling, _raining stars_. _

_I remember the wide, majestic dome of the Capitol, shielding the world beneath from the red hue of the land and the sky, as if purging the anger and fire from the earth and replacing it with calm, shining white walls and elegant structures, curving through the sky as if to scoop the stars right out of their galaxies. I remember the many stalls, shops, and places of congregation, broken up by the old, paved roads of bright, undiluted stone, unwearied by time and temperance – nigh _untouched._ I remember growing up there, beneath the dome, filled with the strongest sense of adventure and the surest spirit - filled with the fire and passion to fulfil a life spent amongst the stars, no matter what the Academy taught us – no matter what society dictated was proper. Like that man – the Renegade, they called him, who'd swanned off with a TARDIS some-when, and threw the rules of our closed-minded society into a volcano on some far off planet, happy to be rid of it, happy to be rid of the same sky, despite its beauty, which in its static nature lost majesty over time. _

_I remember when I looked into the Untempered Schism at age eight, small, barely fuelled with enough thought to function, retained by a vastness that was so, so _empty,_ until I just _filled _with the most intense bright spark – the need to _run.

_But I never ran. _

_Not until the sky was alit with another _kind _of fire – when the earth churned with a wave of death – when the Daleks ascended onto our peaceful world filled with the hate typical of their kind, and made the stars descend on us, not like a rain-shower of glittering suns, but like a platoon of doom, _bereft_ of the beauty they were naturally given, and given the purpose of destruction to mark our planet into desolation. _

_For fifty years the war raged. I remember the beauty of Arcadia, a shining diamond of a city fortified by four-hundred sky trenches – _infallible_, they called it – _consumed_ by rage and by fire as the years went on, a plumage of stars cracked against its side as it remained untouched. I remember an almost ceaseless death, by fire, by Dalek laser, by explosive. The endless step-backs into the past, the unravelling of certain timelines that culminated in many deaths – my own last breath, so, so many times, and then the ceaseless horror of revival when the dust has restrung itself into the atmosphere, the fire once again feeding off of the acrid air after having finally settled and lain _still._ Over and over, timelines undone, timelines repeated, without end – until the Time Lock was so infamously put in place to ensure that both sides could no longer make a mess of time, or prevent the fate of so many. I remember the dust rising on the 38__th__ year of the war, smoke slinking through the decrepit remains of a fallen hospital, still burning with a fire high on the coming of death that my people, despite regeneration, could not escape – there was no _time_. My mother had been inside – had perished in the piercing flames, like so many injured others, who – who couldn't _get out._ She had been recovering from an injury she'd procured from the last siege – from the sudden absence of life in my father, who the Daleks had blasted into the dust of our last stronghold upon the _final _hours of the _ninth _night. I remember thinking, Rassilon, why can't it just _rain,_ and wash away the stink and festering desperation of war away? _

_And then I remember, as I have always known, that our land is bone-dry, and has always been in need of the reprieve of _rain_. Our culture has allowed us to nurture only cold detachment, intelligence, superiority. We've never _nurtured_ anything for the sake of nurturing it. We stepped back, and allowed darkness to fester not only in our enemies, but within ourselves as well. _

_And it makes me cry every time, because _we_ were the architects of our own downfall. After all, my people, or at least the Council, made the choice to utilise plans for the Final Sanction should our end come upon us, and cull the existence of time itself, _all living creatures_, to ensure the lone existence of our _own people.

_I remember – I remind myself, every day, every minute, every moment of this war – that it wasn't this war that hardened us – that made us so _cold,_ but our own need to survive and retain superiority that took precedence over all others – us, the supposed watchers, retainers of _truth _and _wisdom_ and _guidance._ The monsters aren't the ones invading – they were already here, hiding, growing, infecting our way of life for so, so many years – calling to arms the Daleks, who in reciprocation, returned our own hell that had been _festering_ here for so many years._

Hate. Intolerance. Control. Superiority. Emotionlessness.

_However I remember that despite this there are still members of our society that foster imaginations that seemed decrepit to grow and thrive in such calamity, pain, hunger and growing _silence_. Full of hope, and strength, and perseverance, even in the eye of falling stars that promised no fulfilment of a wish, as the humans of Earth believe, but rather the fulfilment of death. _

_Even on the eve of the 51__st__ year, there is still one hope left for our settlement outside of the Capital._

One gift.

_And that is one Romanadvolutrelundar. _

…

The gong rang out – _dong, dong, dong – _a primal heartbeat brimmed with frantic urgency, the people jettisoned from anxious, quiet detachment into a spree of fast, untraceable movement as the sounds of war rung wild about the settlement. I rose from my bunker, hearts lodged somewhere high above my head, as if to hang me – drag me around as they beat out a drum of terror. The fire of the sky burned away at my eyes, reminding me of what should not be obscuring it's hue, what should not be idle in the skies as if to mimic the very stars they released upon us, what should not have turned our sacred symbol of fire into a destructive force that for so many years had symbolised our life. For a moment I was lost in a sea of my own feeling, the sound of the deafening gong then quiet and meek in comparison to the crashing tidal wave of raw, total and absolute horror.

The enemy is coming.

The enemy is here.

_The Capital is protected, but us? We are vulnerable. _

And then the stars exploded in my mind. Fear bloomed in my chest with a vice-like grip, mingling with a sense of shock and worry, tumbling – tangling around into a large knot of sheer, soul-encompassing _dread_. Suddenly, as if in reciprocation of my own mangled sobriety, the ground shook from the force of a vehement blast – the ground exploding like a tumultuous wave of toxic fog, engulfing the far-outreaches of our settlement in a plumage of dry despair. The sky was littered with charred, fragmented debris that fell like an illusion of raining tar. The air was thick with it – with the ashes. It's hard to breathe. My eyes watered. My head started to spin. I – I… no, no, no, I couldn't see – I couldn't feel, I couldn't hear, I couldn't – where, where was –

My body moved.

I _ran._

The sounds of raucous explosions, of down-trodden screams of despair, of vehement fire lapping at the legs of our ancient structures, trailed and ghosted every pull and tug of my leg muscles, every step, every blink, every breath. I hated that my body could move at a time like this – that even as my mind was caught up in so many throws of – of _pure emotional sickness –_ I could still, after so, so many years of experience, react – the effects of tireless war written deep down into the very recesses of my bones, sinews working at a tireless, well-practiced pace in its application – to live, to survive, to _not die._

And I hated it. For all of my life I wanted to run.

And now running had become synonymous with _death._

But still, I ran – I ran away from the blooming terror, I ran from my people who lay dying in pools of their own regeneration before their golden cocoons were pierced with bright, destructive blue lights. I almost stopped to aid a man, a poor, poor man whose leg had been blown off in the blast, left a mangled, crimson mess of burnt flesh – an easy target for a Dalek, his inability to run or get away was his downfall. But when he saw me, mid-flight, my eyes wild and body angled in his direction he just shook his head, smiling softly and uttering "run", before he was consumed by the hate of a Daleks shot, it's echoing "EXTERMINATE" ringing horribly in my ears like the sound of metal grating against metal. He was lost. And so I kept on running. I ran with the weight of every life lost, who I did not save, who I could not save because – because today was a day when no-one could _win._

And I ran because if I just stopped for one – one _single second, _I wouldn't be able to accept it.

But no, _no, _couldn't think about that now, not now! But… but what if that man, that poor, poor man, had been her? My hearts stopped – no, no! None of that! There's fire, there's poison – in the air, hiding away the suns from my sight, taking away the distant, hopeful light of the stars. I could almost feel the very teeth of flames biting at my heels, my shoeless legs pounding harder, faster against the rough, rubble-littered earth, its golden hue lost to the impregnable sheet of dark ash at its doorstep. I could feel the sharp, jagged remnants of some metal object digging into the heels of my feet, bringing with it a blooming pain that rose up the lines of my dark legs, riddled with untreated cuts and bruises.

But I kept running, running, _running_.

Towards. Towards our last defence.

_Rassilon, I hope she's there. She has to. Oh, Rassilon. _

And suddenly the sounds of utter destruction are veiled, obscured by the soothing, almost maternal walls of our only fortified building, protected by a measly defence of space-obscuring technology and a single sky trench. It would hold.

_But for how long?_

Nevertheless I stopped at the centre of the entrance hall, the walls alit with burning, half-used candles dotting the vast space and illuminating old pieces of technology, discarded here when the war began. Someone was shouting – organising the many hordes of people here, consoling them, guiding them, but I don't hear the words. I let my body relax, for just _one moment –_ deep breaths of pure, happy, _clean air_ rattling through the shallow shell of my body. And when I relaxed I could think again, I could feel my hearts beating erratically – within my chest rather than choking me.

And then I notice it. The quiet in my mind.

_The silence._

I bit back a sob. My frame froze, locked in an uncomfortable sea of absolute desolation, my eyes fogged by a glass-pane of unreleased tears, fuelled by irritable dust, blank sadness and a tide of rising madness. I was suddenly weighed down by the absence of the Time Lords and Time Lady's left outside, their bodies either devoured by flame or by Dalek hate. Oh, Rassilon, the silence hurt, it _hurt_ – a flowering knot of cold, hard glass pressing against my hearts and against the shell of my mind which was once so abuzz with noise – with the voices of life. I was cold. I was exhausted. I was spent. I was broken.

_Where is she?_

A hand reached out from behind me, grasping my shoulder in a firm, tight grip as if to hold all of the tiny fragments of myself together. I could feel the gentle caress of a mind slipping into my own, like a cool, therapeutic lap of a wave against sand, reading every thought, every line.

Behind me there was a soft, almost sympathetic intake of breath.

"It's not your fault, you know. You… you… _no one_ could have done anything. No one"

_The Silence is broken._

Suddenly my pin-straight posture slouched in tiredness, aged so vastly by the last 50 years.

"I know. I know, but I can't change how I _feel_. Every other last breath of life feels like an addition to my own which I don't deserve – which – which just shouldn't – which I can't – if it was you, lying there –"

The hand squeezed my shoulder gently, a calm and pleasant buzz of assurance and care flooding through my mind like a winter breeze, reminding me that I was not alone, that there were others, that they were _there_. That it was not silent yet.

A kaleidoscope of colours mingled inside the recesses of my mind, from a dangerous purple, hidden under the pretence of a calm and steadfast white, to a blindingly beautiful shade of yellow, almost golden, raining down a heavenly load of hope and love into the distraught dark green, blue and grey, tangled mess of my mind. Wordless understanding passed between us, helping piece back the shattered remains of myself – making my breath feel for the first time in weeks like my own, and not a gift, not the sad remains of someone else's.

The explosions still rung like a piercing drum from the outside of the hull, but now with the doors of the compound closed, sealed by wreaths of distorted time, I was able to breathe, and remember.

Remember that the suns do rise, and that the fire of the sky does not signify death, but a beginning. That the colour of fire did not belong to the platoon of Daleks raging war on the difference of others, but to the Time Lords – a symbol of all the little deaths and rebirths that identify our people and our pride. That all was not lost – not if there is still blessed _noise _in our minds.

I turned my head back, the cluttered mess of my soot-dressed, blond hair the only reminder of the chaos raining down outside.

And I smiled – because this is was the one lone being I knew who could ever turn such despair into such hope.

"Thank you"

There was silence for a few moments between us, as if to absorb the words, and the thoughts behind them, before they were gone.

With a shake of the head I repelled all thoughts of disaster – I knew my end, and if this was it, I would not waste a _single_ word on terror. I was cheeky once – I was young, exuberant, fun-loving, willed with a heart hell-bent on adventure and the desire to _run_. I decided to endeavour to be that woman again, as I always did in the presence of my closest friend, who like the two suns, rose every morning as if to individually inspire hope.

"I… I should know not to despair – well you're _here_, after all, dear cousin, and you _are_ terrifying enough, with that giant gob of yours, to do some damage on your own, I suppose. You could probably talk them into offing themselves, actually"

I smiled, although it was neither wide nor full enough to actually reveal any form of delight.

"You make us proud"

I knew I was rambling, quite unsurely too, but nevertheless Romana grinned, the deep-set crinkles around her eyes the only indication of the roiling sea of turmoil beneath, as she elbowed me heavily in the side and uttered a short, slightly dead laugh.

"You know me – saving lives with my over-pronounced gob"

Suddenly a massive, tempestuous blast sounded like an earthquake against the shell of the fortress, a boisterous cacophony of metallic grinding and greedy, gorging fire, preceded by the sound of something piercing the air like a knife. A twin explosion sounded from the other side of the structure, reflecting the sounds of a dying star, a silent kind of noise almost like a painful purr besides the sound of rocks lunging off of the roof and to the earth bellow.

_They're attacking._

I glanced around the large hall, unearthing with my eyes each scared and lonely face about the room, each face lined with dust, cuts and dried blood. Each face marked with silent tear-tracks, with solemn acceptance, with unknowing, innocent eyes, and I just knew, more than I had ever known, that this was _it_.

Today was the day when _everyone dies_.

And then I noticed a woman, draped in the thinnest tatters of garb, once white and immaculate and now marked with tears and burn marks, huddled into a corner of the room, a candle set right alongside her, just revealing the small, innocent life she carried. Blue eyes. Pure, untouched by dust and by ruin. Held close and kept warm by a mother visibly shaking from fear, her eyes glassy, and her face tracked with a million roads of tired wrinkles and salty tears. And yet her embrace was so warm, so gentle, so caring. _Nurturing._

And then I just _knew._

_I can't accept it. I won't._

I glanced back at Romana's tall, willowy frame, her thin, messy, slightly burnt brown hair hanging in front of her deep-set warm brown eyes. She pursed her pouted lips, slightly irritated from biting, in contemplation, a look that much resembled her second incarnations' – a look that her current fourth was heavily influenced by. Her eyes flitted about the room, roaming, searching for something amongst the vast sea of space around us. Besides the huddled people, heads bent in depression, and the old, useless cuttings of technology, there was nothing.

_What was it she was looking for?_

Her eyes finally landed on something, pausing for the smallest fraction of time, before returning to me, a sad, almost haunted look about her. And yet there was a spark, a small plumage of light in her eyes, reminding me much of the brightest star in our galaxy.

For a minute our eyes locked – and amidst the quiet rumbling of the thoughts of other Time Lords, like the old rev of our most ancient technologies – revealed to me a series of emotions and thoughts that made my heart burst.

_Love. Acceptance. Understanding. Fear. Uncertainty. Determination._

For one small moment it was just us again, as it was when we were younger, before the Academy transformed her into their puppet, before she disappeared, and then returned many years later the same girl I had long lost and trusted in youth.

"_There's not much time, but we have to hold the Dalek's off. Something… something's going to happen, I can almost feel it. Something's coming. We have to keep them out. You in?"_ I whispered to her through my mind.

Her bronze eyes watered, lips trembling, and yet quirked into the tiniest smirk as if she knew something.

"_Yes, yes… something is"_

She's silent for a second, her thoughts shrouded in darkness, fear, hesitation.

And then every kind of strength I'd ever seen her utilise solidified, her mind made up and strong, contained – resolute.

"_I'm in"_

With a strong mental probe she had the whole room's attention, her authority as past-Lady President raining down on us like a voltage of pure attentiveness… and hope.

"Everyone move, go! Deeper – deeper into the building. There should be bunkers, a whole floor of them, down. I need you all to go – arm yourselves with whatever you can find, we'll hold them off as long as we can. Now go – _go!_"

The people rose like an anxious flood, rushing out of the doors on pure adrenaline and fear. The woman, the old, old woman, with babe in arms, rose shakily to her feet. Weakly she shuffled to the end of the room, an obvious wound hindering a smooth exit. However she plundered on, face blank and bereft of any trace of her tears and fear – she no longer shook, but stood resolute. She eyed the room with interest, picking up an old, sharp plaque of metal from the grated remains of an old machine, and exited. The little life in her arms started to cry, a high keening wail that now, with the room almost absent of life, rang like a calling – a desperate plea for aid. The mother just shook her head, her dark hair obscuring her eyes, and left the room, the slightest nod sent our way like a silent, melancholic goodbye.

A gong sounded from deep within the building, signifying the same goodbye from our fellow people.

I grinned almost manically.

"Well… it's just us and fire, now"

We don't allow a moment for pause to dwell. We flitted about the room in a rush of articulated movements, shifting old pieces of decrepit technology into a pile, like a long, metallic wall of defence, shining with the light of the many dotted candles about the room and making the structure look more and more like a burning silver tree, reflecting fluttering shards of flame about the room – our own personal reminder of our beautiful world before destruction.

Explosions and laser-fire still resounded heavily around us, but it was obvious that our sky bunker stayed intact, unlike the many hundreds of Arcadia's which, in the last few days, had been eviscerated by the Dalek fleets. The fall of Arcadia was just one of many, especially during the whole war's tenure. I remembered the cities of Southern Gallifrey, a roiling mass of sharp cliffs and beautiful snow – destroyed – marked into complete desolation.

And that was just with the Daleks. The Skaro Degradations, the Horde of Travesties, the Nightmare Child, the Could-Have-Been King and his army of Meanwhiles and Never-Weres – they now fought this war too, ensuring an even greater hell to come, every day, every moment, every minute our planet still breathed, keeping us suspended in a limbo of fear and acceptance.

We were losing. That fact is was as sure as the earth was dry.

_All we have left is time._

"Rayana"

I lifted my head, turning to the call of my shortened name. Romana smirked, a little quirk of the lips which usually exuded confidence and the promise of a secret. Today it's flat, fragile, but nevertheless stayed as a reminder of her pure competence, strength and solidity. I lifted a thin eyebrow in question, mirroring back to her my own smirk, held back with less conviction, and a little more bitterness hanging in the eves.

"Here, take one of _these_" she hummed, lifting a lazy hand towards three small, archaic laser guns, which by the looks of them, hadn't been in production for many, many, _many_ thousands of years.

"They may not look much, but they work, I checked their batteries. It's… well these are the only proper weapons we have" she whispered unevenly, her pretty, pixie-like face torn by a scrunched up, tortured expression and a slow, disdainful grimace. She scoffed darkly, staring at the weapon as if by doing so it would instantly combust.

Well, they _were _archaic.

With a sigh of empty defeat I sparingly took one, eyeing its small, smooth and sleek barrel made of some kind of iridescent bronze-coloured metal. It was quite dented and bashed, almost completely cloaked in a sheath of decaying dust – each indentation and decorative fixture being the only notable features of its make. It had a curved, crescent moon handle, which once gripped made a bright green light at the end of the nozzle light up, like a pointer indicating the range of shots it could provide. In other words – definitely not the greatest example of Time-Lord-technology. But nevertheless, when the light of the surrounding candle-fires hit it right, it reflected a plethora of different, deep shades of garnet, each shade glowing like a multi-faceted, bottomless jewel.

I smiled, the first true one in a long, long time.

"It's a bit pretty" I gasped, unable to mask a traitorous, stray wolf-whistle.

Romana laughed, old smile-lines tracking back through her smooth, youthful skin, her eyes reflecting that same bright spark of hope I glimpsed so briefly before.

"Isn't it just, Rayanadvolutrelundar. Those dust-bins will be quite jealous, I suppose"

She grinned, that giant, all-consuming smile, filled with as much tooth as physically possible, before the cast of deep thought claimed her features once again. She gripped the barrel of her own weapon hard, its garnet facets adding to the many swirling reflections of fire around her, hands going white with the strain as she stared at one of the many decrepit machines to our left. I turned questioningly towards it, examining its liquid-silver, thick and wide metal plate, its feet touching the ground, surface grated and indelicate like a choppy, rippling sea of mercury, and the control panel besides it – which with its large, blaring buttons and strangely flickering lights, seemed even more archaic amongst the old pieces of technology scattered around the stronghold.

I stared at it severely, as if the intense fire of my deep green eyes would be able to recognise it, or understand why it was so prevalent in Romana's racing mind. But no such realisations occurred – it was as alien to me as the strange jewels one used to be able to find in the markets of Arcadia, which were rumoured to have been collected through several regenerations spent scouring the universe by one strange man, whose appreciation of stones reflected his name –The Igneous.

I shook my head. Whatever it was, it was not important.

Pulling her gently towards the dirty ground behind the shiny, aflame barricade we built, I sat her down, nudging her bony, frail shoulder to try and break her from her rampant thoughts.

"Guess what we're going to do now" I whispered, wiggling my eyebrows in a weak form of jest that seemed to be bereft of any actual humour and joy.

"We wait" she uttered blathingly, rolling her eyes as she jokingly stuck her nose high in the air – in fact vertically.

I snorted sardonically.

"Yes, yes. We wait, you foot"

Silence reigned once more, allowing the only sound to be that of the destruction of our home for the past two years, it's beautiful, if battered, structures gone – it's paved streets reduced to rubble and our bunkers buried with all of our livelihoods, despite how few they may have grown over the years. I kept the gun clutched ready in my hand but in my idleness hugged my legs to my chest in protection, as if my own warmth would be able to keep out the cold reminders of desolation that the falling stars and explosions provided.

Suddenly I was outside again, surrounded by the wreckage, running, running, _running_. The acrid smoke was once again strangling my lungs, the dust flittering through the remains of broken structures and debris. The sky, it's beautiful, passionate, hopeful shade of red distorted and curtained by a shower of falling bombs, bright lasers, descending debris and wide-brimmed, dark metal ships flooding the landscape with a poisonous flame. My hearts were beating, like the war gong, _dong, dong, dong,_ fast and hard and desperate, resonating with the destruction all around, the exploding buildings – homes. And the people – the gradual _silence_ – the golden cacoons of light pierced by bright blue lasers which I did not try to deter – the people who I did not stop to help, because – because –

"You know, you remind me a lot of him. He gets that same, haunted look, so pained, so old. He tries to save everyone, that idiot. Like you. But… you can't save everyone, Rayana, no matter how hard, how desperately, you try. You just end up getting hurt – haunted – old, like you look now. And you shouldn't, you're so… young. Younger than me. Only graduated a decade before this madness started. You don't have to carry the weight of every life on your shoulders – you – you just can't" she uttered, her voice strong until the end, where it rattled and shook with emotion. She splays out her legs in front of her, her head banging against the silver metal shield behind us as she leaned back in defeat.

I didn't say anything. She seldomly talked about this man, as if his very utterance would make her cringe in regret or anger. I never did learn who he was – who had returned to me the Romana I had long missed from infancy – who had returned to me the greatest _gift_.

"You know, I've been round for years now, running the show, being all _that_. That's what I believed anyway, for the longest time. Star of the Academy. Intelligent, clever, witty. Until that man. And then I was Lady President. I was superior again, or at least had false airs of superiority, though I never misused my power. I regenerated, became colder, bolder, more manipulative for this war. And then I was taken by the Daleks, tortured… tortured for 20 years. And then I was me again, wait – no, I was a shell of a Romana. And then I saw you again, after so, so _long_. And it was like meeting that man all over again. You have that same spirit – that same, old spirit – and yet so free. Except you have something more – you had enough compassion to turn me around again, become that old Romana that I'd been bereft of for centuries. You've never even _ran_, and yet it's like the very _stars_ are raining in your eyes. And it's just, it's even harder for me to watch that bright light leave your eyes, make you bitter, make you feel so _guilty_. This war, this siege today – you couldn't have done anything about it. It's just… sometimes fate makes us lose. Makes us lose it all. But that's alright – wait, no, it's not. It's not alright. But we can all live past that. You can. You and me, we _can_. I know it"

I clutched her hand tightly – kissing the smooth back of it in thanks for her comfort. I didn't let go. I couldn't, even as the room shook from a quintessentially destructive blast, plaster dropping from the ceiling in haunted rivulets, as if the sky was falling. Her words sent a knife straight through my hearts, reminding me of her own pain, her own desolate circumstances.

Her past had always been ambiguous. Now, at the end, it should be brought to light, just like the rest of her beautiful, empowering soul.

"Who was that man?" I whispered, nuzzling my head into the crook of her neck.

She sighed.

"He… they used to call him Theta, in the Academy… He's like a hurricane, that man, drifting in and out of your life, leaving everything in pieces – all of the old things you used to believe, all the lies. He's like the sun that nourishes you – too strong and you'll wilt, but if just right will let you grow – and in doing so, you so desperately want to be the moon – the moon that reflects the light of the sun" she smiled, kissing the top of my head as the destruction continued to reign outside, far away from our own little cocoon of love.

She laughed.

"I was intrigued. But at the same time, I just wanted to run away. He was… a great friend. He could have been more, I guess, at least to me. But I just knew – I knew that when the dust settled and he ran away again, I wouldn't be able to be his moon. But that's irrelevant because he didn't need a moon – he needed another sun, an equal"

Romana shook her head, laughing lightly.

"Me, I just wanted to see how far I could get. How far I could run. I wanted to be my own sun, shining for myself – didn't want to share it with anyone. And so I ran. And that's what we did – we ran together. That's all"

She rested her head of dark curls atop mine, and I just clutched her hand, gave her all of the strength I could garner. I felt… warm. Untouchable.

I wished the moment would be _infinite_.

And then the sound of cables sparking and melting sounded with an almighty crash, shaking the very foundations of our safe-haven like a powerful force of vengeance. The sound of explosions sounded, heavier, harder, closer, as larger chunks of the roof fell to the ground in sudden heaps of dust and rubble. The sounds of impending doom worsened. I could practically feel the electrical field of the sky trench disintegrate over us like a shroud.

Romana stiffened.

"Damn, they've broken through the sky trench. We have twenty minutes at most before they get past the space-obscurer. You can only mask the location and size of a structure for _so long_… plus space-obscurers don't make very good shields…" I whispered despondently, resignation evident in my voice.

Romana stood hastily, dragging me up with her as she began to pace. All I could feel from her mind was a mess of confused, golden, dark grey and sickly purple colours.

And then she stopped.

"Twenty minutes. Okay. That's fine. I can do it. It'll work" she muttered darkly, turning away for a moment.

"What will?" I questioned, confusion still festering in every particle of my existence.

She stiffened once more, turning to me in a small, ethereal ark. She smiled sadly as she stepped closer, her eyes locked on my own.

"I'm sorry for this. But it's for your own good" she replied, her words blunt and dry of emotion. Suddenly she reeled back her arm, the butt of her gun at the ready as it arced through the air, too fast for the eye to follow. And then – and then –

_Darkness._

…

Synapses fired as the darkness disintegrated, the grogginess of unconsciousness leaving me at a lazy rate. Where was I? Umm… settlement outside of the Capitol, the main stronghold. What happened? Our settlement was… was… it was attacked. Why?

Why? Why had I been unconscious?

Think, think, _think._

The sky trench failed and then – and then –

_Romana. _

I immediately sat up, paying no mind to the harsh, mangled – _bloody violent_ – thudding of my brain and the dizziness of sudden motion. I panicked, what was happening? What was she _doing –_

"Romanadvolutrelundar –!"

_She's _cuffed_ me, cuffed me to the metal grating of that machine she'd been staring at so intensely before – with strips of _fabric! _And… and she's tied an old, minging bag to my wrist. Fabulous. _

She danced around in a frenzied two-step to my right, her hands flying about the strange controller system, blipping lights and all, her weapon left discarded at her feet.

"Romana –"

"No, no just _shush_! Absolute silence! _Finite_! I need to _concentrate _here, so. Just. Shut. Up"

I stared at her, my mind a violent sea of confusion, anger and betrayal. _How…? What…? _

"Romana –"

"I told you to be quiet!"

"But –!"

She snapped.

"I'm trying to save your _BLOODY _life so will you please – just – just _stop!_" She growled, her glaring eyes finding mine and locking them in the most heated battle of wills I had ever experienced.

She – she just expected me to give in – to let… well, whatever it is that is going on, happen?

_Save me?_

And I was instantly filled with _angry confusion. _

"NO, I WILL NOT! Now tell me, what in Rassilon's name is _GOING ON_"

She flinched – suddenly seeming so feeble, her eyes downcast and her posture slouched as she rested against the blipping, glowing machine console, her head bowed in frustration – in despair.

She let out a frustrated shriek.

"Oh can't you see? You're so _THICK. _Arcadia _fell_. Every enemy we have ever made is _coming. _Hell has _descended. _They attacked us today, why? _Because they plan to invade, they plan to take the Capital._ You think Rassilon and his wag of merry, idiotic council members will just let that happen – let us lose? No – I haven't been a part of that council for _years, _but I know that if they even _think _we're _close _to losing, they'll use the Final Sanction – wipe out everything, every star, every planet, every _form of life – gone – _and for what? Just us, alone in the universe_? _There's one man – one man I know, who will not. Let. That. Happen. The end? It's coming. In fact, I'm willing to bet that it'll be _today._ So I built this – found the scraps of this archaic, dismantled Space-Time Transporter – yes, it's a _bit_ of a dodgy, dangerous form of transportation, but _really, what other choices are there?_ – months ago, been rebuilding it ever since because I knew, I _knew,_ this day would come_"_

I'm shocked into silence, my hearts tangled up in a mess of painful tugs inside my chest, beating up, up to my throat, making it tight.

_The Final Sanction._

"Yes", she sighed in relief, "you finally get it now. Either way, it's the end. That man – that brilliant, fantastic, _wonderful_ man is going to end it. But I won't let him end you too. There's life out there, stars, planets, creatures that _need_ you. I can feel it. I can see your timeline – it's long, bright and as luminescent as the brightest star, tangled amongst the many millions of life-forms out there. You – you're not like us, you're not meant to be lost _here"_ she cried, whizzing back into excited motion as she pulled more bright blue levers and flicked more luminous switches, the motions fuelled by the passion and energy garnered by her words.

I didn't know what to say, what to _feel._ For the first time in my life I was completely and utterly _lost, _decrepit of any kind of reaction, any kind of inclination towards an emotion.

I was silent for a few moments. When I finally found my bearings again, I spoke.

"And you… you think I can just accept that? My world – _destroyed –_ and you expect me to keep on living?"

"Yes" she whispered. "Because you _have_ to"

I growled in frustration.

"Who do you think I'm going to affect, to save? The bloody universe has spun on just fine without me for the last innumerable amount of years!"

She stopped for a moment, completely still. For a moment it seemed like she was going to cry – and then the smallest twitch of a smile takes form on her face, making me question my sight and my sanity.

"… What?" I mumbled, absentmindedly trying to undo the knots on my hands without much success, my body still stuck on the platform as it started to light up with power.

_I'm running out of time._

"You? Who are you going to _save? _The question is who _aren't _you going to try and save? You – you are the most _compassionate_ person I have ever met. You may be bitter, tired and unnaturally old – you may even be brittle at times, but you are just so_ blindingly bright._ Remember the fall of our last stronghold – the on the south side of the Capital? We were ambushed – I remember you reaching towards this woman, the Clarity – she was always staring off into the distance, searching for something, _someone_. There was something she said _she had to do. _And when she was half burnt and buried under the debris of an explosion, her body mangled by the flames, you stood by her side as she died, holding her hand, telling her that she tried, that she found _you. _And she smiled, her brown hair having fallen out of that bun of hers, and said that she was so happy to have met you – that yes, you were _worth finding. _She told you to_ 'run, you clever girl, and remember her'_. What does that say, huh? Well you know what, that doesn't matter because I can't let you die here. You're _all_ I – all I have left. Layla – Braxiatel – K9 – they're all gone. I _can't_ let you go too". Her voice broke. She was crying.

"No, Rayana. The stars are going to rain someday – they'll need you then"

I could feel the tears slowly trickling out, small beads of anguish dripping down the side of my tan face, falling to the ragged ruins of my clothing.

"Please, Romana. Don't."

She just shook her head, trying to hold back tears and rabid sobs, pouted lips trembling with the effort.

"If I survive this – if Gallifrey doesn't fall – I'll find you, I _promise_ you I'll _find_ you_._ I _promise"_

The platform was lighting up, spilling its beautiful, blinding white magic at a rapid pace now, the light almost obscuring my legs from vision. I could feel the warm heat of it up against my calves, rolling deep into my bones, reminding me of what exactly was about to happen. I couldn't even try to hold back the tears now.

"Romana, _I love you_. You _know_ that, right?" I whimpered, the light getting brighter and brighter.

Romana nodded, her own tears now running like a rapid down her pained face, her eyes red, her lips stretched into the saddest down-curve I had ever seen take form on her features.

"I love you too, cousin. Don't ever forget that, ever" she sniffed, pressing a few final buttons on the console before picking up her laser gun, at the ready, as the twenty minutes almost drew to a close. She set the coordinates in a final flurry of movement, her face alight with a morbid, manic kind of happiness.

"I'm sending you to Earth – to the boring-est, most _droll_ place on the planet"

"Oh, so you _do_ really want me to die" I joked darkly. She laughed.

"Have fun with that – who knows, you might get used to the _peace_. I put some supplies in that bag. Psychic paper and everything" she giggled, using limp humour to hide the growing sadness in her eyes, the tears still falling, the shake of her lip and the quivering of her body.

I swallowed hard.

"I…" I whispered.

"I don't want to go"

Before she could answer another jolt of electricity passes through us, signifying the failure of our last defence. Suddenly I can hear the sound of Daleks approaching, their robotic voices mingling together in a war cry of hate, destruction and utter desolation.

We're out of time.

"Come on, come on, come on, finish loading already!" Romana shrieked in distress and horror, the sudden realisation that she may have been too late dawning on her. She violently pressed a few more buttons in frustration, but the light did not take me faster, did not increase in speed.

And then suddenly the door was blasted open, a single Dalek – a scout – rolling into the massive hall, the fire illusion reflected off of the metal barricade shining onto its sleek, glossy side, painting it in a fierce red that only increased its dangerous visage.

Before we could even breathe another word, the loud resounding robotic cry of "EXTERMINATE!" filled the air with a wave of trepidation, of horror. That light, that piercing, blue light that I had seen reflected in the eyes of so many caught in that final moment before death shatters any hope of an easy, peaceful escape, and in the next minute I could feel pain, the darkest, most excruciating pain blossom in my chest – right between my hearts. No matter how many times I had died at the stalk of a Dalek before, I will never, and have never gotten accustomed to the boiling, bubbling poison that spreads from the wound and incinerates every small, tiny inch of your very make up, unwinding it, tearing it, burning it into ash.

Before the Dalek could aim for another fatal shot, Romana mechanically fired her ancient blaster, a warm, orange laser flying from its nozzle like the brightest flair, the sound of it sizzling through the air, landing right in its eyestalk and sending the now lifeless Dalek straight down to the pool of rubble beneath.

She desperately turned to me, pure terror alight in her eyes as regeneration energy started to take me, the transporter also reaching its peak.

_No time._

"They're coming" she whispered, as if uttering it will make it untrue – make it so that she wouldn't have to face them – face them alone, have all of the Time Lords and Time Ladies' lives down, down below weighing on her slight shoulders.

The pain in my body intensified, and I cried out.

"Please…" I gasped, the teleport a minute away from taking me away, from my life, from my planet – from my family.

"Please… don't die. You _won't_ die, right?"

My voice sounded so fragile – the slightest pressure could have broken it – broken me into tiny, tiny fragments.

She shuttered, grasping the handle of her blaster with a firm, undiluted grip. She shook her head, sobbing, but tried to retain a solitary smile.

"Who knows?" she said, her voice cracked and brittle with depression.

"But I'll try"

The world goes silent. And then the sounds of war rumbled up again, claiming our last moment together.

She grinned bitterly, her blaster raised and ready to shoot. She winked.

"_Run_"

And then I'm gone, lost to the blinding golden light of my own regeneration and the pure, white light of the transporter.

_I didn't even get to say goodbye._

For one frozen, eternal, silent moment I was flying past planets, worlds, stars, _galaxies_, only sheltered by the smallest and weakest of electrical barriers. I experienced eternal nights, eternal mornings, eternal fire and eternal cold. I saw so many small, fragile little lives scattered amongst the stars, growing, flourishing, dying. I saw even the smallest of creatures_ run_, round and round and round, everywhere, every when. I flew past a million suns in all stages of life – beginning, middle, just past middle, quite past middle, end. The thin protection of the barrier allowed my regeneration, frozen during its peak, to absorb the excess energy of a million, glittering stars, making my body soar faster, faster, _faster_. In that moment I was as bright as any star, soaring, soaring through the universe. I was a falling star, a _raining_ star. And then for one, harsh second I was encased by the dark, violent Time Vortex, biting painfully against the side of my thighs, my arms, my head. And somehow – _impossibly _– I made it to the other side.

And suddenly the moment, the beautiful, eternal moment, was over, and I was falling, falling fast and hard out of a vast, blue sky, down, down, down.

I thought of Romana. I thought of her warm brown eyes, her doll-like features.

And in the final moments of regeneration I hit the ground, skidding across the ground like a rag-doll from the force of my ascent. My body distorted, broke, shattered. My head hits the ground, hard, and suddenly every memory I had ever held was _gone_. My mind was _silent_.

And then I knew no more.

…

_ "_AUTO DESTRUCT IN TWO MINUTES"

_Synapses spark, darkness alleviates. Shadows wither with the rise to consciousness. Thoughts – true thoughts with words (love those) – rise in insulin, nice kick there – fogginess lifting – ooh and pain, that's not pleasant. Where – Library. What - Vashta Nerada. Archaeologists – thick, and what… What? River, River, River, Computer core, interface. Oh it's all cluttered, an angry mess of emotions, festering, simmering – why? Wrong. Something's wrong. Up. Look up. _

"_Oh, no, no, no, no. Come on, what are you doing? That's my job."_

_Horror. _

_A small quirk of the lips takes form upon her features, just hiding a quiver. A route between the eyes, paved with harsh lines of acceptance and melancholy. No. Have to stop this – have to – _

"_Oh, and I'm not allowed to have a career, I suppose?"_

_Daft. She's daft. Wait, no. She's a bloody archaeologist. Thick. And selfless. And -_

"_Why am I handcuffed? Why do you even _have_ handcuffs?"_

_Incredulousness. Adrenaline – fear, pure fear – she used _handcuffs.._. Wait, concentrate. Tied down, not strong enough to rip off, not skinny enough – no paper-cut-scrape-by's today, then. Despair. Words waver. Lost control of pitch – did that young thing, that youngy-young thing, like five. But not young – no, not young. Again. Gonna lose again. _

"_Spoilers."_

_A wry smile, a rise of the eyebrows – hiding something. A secret, a lie, a million suns burning with her fear, her loss of hope, a life fading – held back by a mask of stoicism. Rassilon, she does know me. No. No more martyr's – what else am I _for_? _

"_This is not a _joke_. Stop this _now_. This is going to kill you! I'd have a chance, you don't have _any_"_

_Too much fear. No. No._

_She snaps._

"_You wouldn't have a chance, and neither do I"_

_Big breath –_

"_I'm timing it for the end of the countdown. There'll be a blip in the command flow. That way it should improve our chances of a clean download"_

_Hearts, beating – too fast – too hard. Pain. Harsh pain. She can't - _

"_River, _please_. No"_

_Harsh intake of breath. Desperation, clear on her face – so old, she looks so old, so fragile - _

"_Funny thing is, this means you've always known how I was going to die. You and…"_

_A gasp of despair – release of energy – utter sadness, on the brink of something, brink of – _

"_All the time we've been together, you knew I was coming here. The last time I saw you, the real you, the future you, I mean, and… and… you turned up on my doorstep, with a new haircut and a suit, with... You both took me to Darillium to see the Singing Towers. What a night that was. The Towers sang, and you both cried"_

_So much sadness. Destruction, pain – my gift, to all those whom _touched _– to all those who _run_…_

"AUTO DESTRUCT IN ONE MINUTE"

"_You wouldn't tell me why, but I suppose you knew it was time. My time. Time to come to the library. You even gave me your screwdriver. That should have been a clue"_

_Screwdriver – have to, have to – can't – _

_NO!_

"_There's nothing you can do"_

_The saddest look upon her face, so – so filled with compassion. No. No more. No more death, no more destruction - _

"_You can let me do this!"_

_A desperate plea. _

_A sob from her lips – about to break, to shatter – _

"_If you die here, it'll mean I've never met you"_

_Good. It would be better – my breath would never have _infected_ you, all those who _run –

"Time can be rewritten_"_

_For one moment, her fragility's lost. Her face hardens, ages even more – strengthens – firms _

_Like all the others then. Poisoned – poisoned with strength that finds them – chases them – catches them – a strength I gave. Why, why, why – why can't it just be me? What kind of inspiration is this – one that curses, one that kills? The gift is a lie, and yet I give it, again and again and – _

"_Not those times. Not _one _line. Don't you _dare_"_

_No more. No more. _

_Too late. _

_She whispers. She cries. _

"_It's okay. It's okay. It's not over for _you._ You'll see me again. You've got all of that to come, oh so, so much. Five hearts, time and space. You watch us _run_"_

_Mind is breaking, breaking down. Oh, it's so silent. Hearts – beating too fast, adrenaline – crashing down. But not enough – still, still, still – _

_The silence. _

_And the questions._

_Not enough time. _

"_River, you know my _name_"_

"10"

"_You whispered my name in my ear"_

"9"

"8"

"7"

"_There's only one reason I would ever tell anyone my name. There's only one time I could"_

"_Oh, hush. It's not what you're thinking – oh, you _are_ thick"_

"6"

"_What?"_

"5"

"_The rain is coming, Doctor. Oh, and you're so parched, so _alone_. Wait for her. Wait for _us_. When the stars rain down –"_

"4"

"_What?"_

"3"

"_River, what –"_

_One last smile. A tear. _

"2"

"_Spoilers"_

"1"

_The cables connect, and the fragments of a future full of rain bursts – light, so much, disperses – _

_She's gone._

…

"Everybody knows that everybody dies. But not every day – not today"

River runs her hand down the worn, TARDIS blue journal that has housed so, so many wonderful memories, full of life, full of adventure and full of _love_ – the most treasured gifts of all. She smiles, lifting her head. It's raining.

"And certainly not for them"

_Run. _

...

**A/N: Thanks for reading, please review if you can :)**


	2. The World of the Single Hearted

**A/N: Hi guys, thanks for the lovely response! Now I'm still not entirely sure whether this will be something I will stick to, but I will say that if interest does not leave, and time does not dwindle away, then we will have a nice long story ahead of us. I will say though that this story is mainly focused on character development rather than on plot, so if you were expecting some fabulous deviation from the canon material, I'm sorry to disappoint. I do have a few original things/ideas/plot devices, and this **_**is**_** a Doctor/OC, so there will be variations obviously, but not ones that will completely reshape the structure of the original plotline, no. Anyways thankyou for your patronage, enjoy! And please remember to review – I really do love feedback!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything from Doctor Who but my OC and other such original, fanciful things.**

…

Chapter 1 – The World of the Single-Hearted

"Oh bugger, I've misplaced that bloody binder _again_" I hissed with disgust, flitting about the small, confined room like a moth without a flame to attract it, or, perhaps, like a person who has just lost something very, very important.

"Mrs Burns is going to have my head this time, no matter how jovial her tea and crumpets make her in the afternoons. Oh dear lord, I'm done for. Absolutely – please don't let a bolt of lightning come down and hit my right now for the absolute _cliché _I'm about to spout – _doomed!_" I screamed, flopping onto the ground in a dispassionate heap of gangly limbs and disquiet mutterings.

"Death by librarian. There must be a precedence for this"

The room was bereft. Well, bereft besides all of the junk, ranging from tiny knickknacks bought at some point or other during a token trip to Surrey to large, deep mahogany ornamental doors without a frame to utilise its function, which leaned roguishly against a wall in all of its exotic, patchwork-paint glory, fitted with an almost excited air of possibilities, as if it were to meticulously steal you away and elope off to some coble-street jungle, where every coffee shop has a store window written in cursive and a few dozen reservoirs bordered by elaborate and majestic street lamps from long gone eras. Despite the oppressive, uniform nature of the white toned walls, the accumulation of bright, dazzling paintings filled with swirling watercolours of smoke and gold dotted the room like a series of luminous planets which broke up the vast, empty space of the collaborative walls. Piles upon piles of multi-coloured books lined all four faces of the room, as if to close off the buzzing, frantic, busy world outside with a cool, calm barrier of intellect and imagination, which in some ways sifted through the uniform frequencies of everyday society and gilded it in golden, shining jewels of something almost alien. Upon the floor littered like a spattering of silver stars or candy-clotted clouds was a bed of leaves of paper, each sheathed in a neat yet hurried print of cursive text, which upon further inspection, revealed a very unrestful mind.

As I said. Bereft.

It's been three years. Three years and I still lose track of time, of things, of people. I've been working at the local library for a good year and a half, and besides to scope and fill my mind with the information and life spilling out of every novel, every page, every word, I have been unable to really make sense of what has happened to me, who I was, or what everything _means. _

The flashes come, like some unwarranted dream in the waking hours – jarring images of flames and destruction and golden light. Forests of murky, shapeless forms drift out of every frame like a ghost far from the life of reality, and senses come in bursts of violent, bone-crushing tempests of earth and dark clouds which rise up from the balls of my feet with a jarring tremor, in the next trailing moment morphing into a wild ring like the last breath of a race pressed upon the air, the darkest shroud – and then gone, nothing but dissipating smoke receding back into the visage of reality, which moves on undeterred, as if the brief moment of hallucination was nothing but a lie whispered upon the breeze, gone in a moment and seldomly noticed – leaving behind an empty mind, and _silence_.

I rolled onto my side, eyes closed, body curving into itself as if to carve out the truth of my existence and hold it, for one beautiful, magical, wonderful moment in the light of the sun, make it corporeal, make it _real – _

Because I'm not the same _inside._

And when I ceased the endless dark drapery of the void behind closed eyelids, opening up to the brilliant, mangled light of the room, I was staring into the eyes of a strange creature, hunched in the most fragile of airs and clinging to its middle as if to hold all of the tiny little fragments of its being together, and cloaked in a blanket of shining light – ethereal – gilded in the flickering haze of a reflection. It's short, almost pixie-length dark hair messily splayed across her forehead like a curving black blossom, biting harshly into the paleness of her skin, contrasting her pursed pink lips and her arched, fully shaped eyebrows frozen in scrunched sorrow. The mirror image of the woman re-enacted every twitch of my lips, every lift of my dark eyebrows, every bat of my eyelids. She shared my solitary shake of the head, lips tight in an errant smile of acceptance blazing across her features like a promise.

What the promise was, was a mystery, but one that I would unwittingly enjoy solving nonetheless.

With a sigh I arched my body into a sitting position, my long, boyfriend-jeans-sheathed legs splayed out in front like an open peg, and snorted.

"Oh, well, could use a little doom. After all, who can forget, 'to die would be an awfully big adventure'" I breathed, a burst of laughter bubbling up from my core like steam, visible in the air, a hazy dream-like film before dissipating in happy ignorance. With a crooked grin now flourishing on my features like a parasitic strangler fig, I let the virus grow – extinguishing the fire of my own confused despair and letting a new, fledgling plant of hope to bloom in the wake and ruin of the past structure, long decayed and without corporeal form to house it or box it in.

Again I danced along the fault lines of the paper-littered wooden floor, fingers fox-trotting along the spines of a million tomes, each volume offering little to the search for the errant, missing binder which would prevent my painful, violent death at the hands of one usually well-mannered librarian, who despite the calming qualities of a good cuppa and a honey-coated crumpet, would still find some dastardly way or form to off me with a tea cup and then hide my body somewhere out in the country – because she's just that prepared for homicide.

But yeah, oh, right. Binder. Gotta find.

And so I searched, hand almost franticly rubbing the lobe of my right ear in apprehension, the plump corner of my lip held captive by the bars of my teeth – and then I paused, stagnated, hand rested gently, petrified in shock, against the form of an old, dirty, soiled bag, which had lain discarded and ignored for the last three years as if haunted by the decay of death, the whole light wood desk quarantined in the one part of the room I did not touch, but to sparingly lay down or pick up work when room was scarce.

_That bag. That _minging_ bag…_

Coloured in smudges of spilled dirt and soot like a blank, ancient canvas dunked in mud that could never be completely washed away, the bag kneeled, little clawed holes torn into its bared, submissive side as if it were the chew toy of some overbearing, frightful beast, and singed by a fire that had never – to my knowledge – flickered close enough to touch, so far was it lost to the black hole of the many days behind me, trailing like a desolate shadow into the crevices of a life awash in smoke.

I had not lain siege on it with my touch, not for one moment, since that first day. I hadn't dared. It stood before me like a testament, like a statue or a gravestone marking a past that was as mysterious as the next sunrise. And it's not meant to be like that. You're meant to _know _who you are, where you've been or what you've been – _what you are. _

And today, for some unknown, inane rationale, like a siren, it sang to me, begging to meet the focus of my eyes and to retain the shaking flesh of my fingers.

And for the first time, I do not resist the call.

With a small, shaky breath I shuffled forward, my fingers flickering, like a light bulb not properly hinged, upon the spilled edges of the top, reaching down, down, down –

I felt something smooth, thin and slightly textured – like – like

_Paper. _

I retracted my hand slowly, as if speed would somehow set off some defence, until I could just see the corners of the small wisp of paper, smooth and creamy in colour – shining with the light of the sun, which despite being held back slightly by the barrier of a smooth glass window, still imposed a sense of re-emergence for the slight bit of paper which had not been welcome in my little reality for the last few years I could _remember_ it.

This. This had started it all, the day of the waking. What was it called?

_Psychic paper._

I couldn't for the life of me figure out _why_ I knew that_._

…

_Synapses. I have synapses, or seem to have synapses. I would assume so, since they _are_ firing, seeing as I am thinking, waking – _

_Oh. I'm awake. Ooh, that's new!_

_With a large jolt of pure adrenalin I flung myself off of whatever little patch of earth I had been resting on, – an actual patch of earth, lookey lookey! –, my eyes swinging wide open for the first time and breathing in the world around like a fish out of water, a frantic kind of need to absorb the vibrant green shade of the rolling hills surrounding me, the tiny, sleepy town far off in the distance and the grey, washboard clouds holding back the warmth and brilliance of a sun which I knew – no, not knew, _felt – _was there, taking over. Childlike delight was my first emotion, relishing in the calming wave of the green earth and the cool, chilled breeze which made gooseflesh – _gooseflesh! – _splatter against the bare, canvas of my body… My _body!

_Oh I was wearing something, I was wearing –_

_Oh._ _Bugger._ Rags_. The long lines of the cloth were in a right state of mangled disarray, half burnt with the hunger of some greedy fire whose presence still festered in the reek of the wound, each small hole infecting the soot-ridden surface of the rough, gauze-like material like maggots may invade a grave. It was extremely thin, covering my shoulders down to my knees in haunted, twisted wisps of earthen drapery. _

"I put some supplies in that bag…"

_My head started to ache, a fresh pain alien to anything I had felt in the fledgling first breaths of my new life, but left it alone and unheralded as I searched the old, ratty bag tied to my wrist, searching, fumbling, grasping. Until something soft touched the tips of my tingling fingers, awash with the first sensation. Cloth. _

_Retracting my limb with childlike enthusiasm I found a long, dark pearl shift dress, which in contrast to my current state of dress was vastly shorter in fashion, up the backs of my mid-thigh, and with sleeves that would cover the entirety of my arms like bark to the flesh of the life beneath. The task of removing the current cloth was troubling at best, as the many vast coils of fabric frozen in tight knots of soot and melted cloth caught many a time upon the circumference of my head, making the wryest smile dance across my face, only pirouetting on to fuller bouts of joy and raucous laughter as the process of getting the new cloth over my naked form proved just as trying, if not more so, as I rather ungracefully tripped over the ripples of it in an attempt to slip it on from the feet. And when I was finally done, the peace of the landscape rolling into the recesses of my bones and easing the excited jitters from my form, I allowed myself to relax, to feel the movement of the earth beneath as it hurtled through space, energy rolling off of its flesh like the successive tide, a thrill of life crashing majestically against the lip of this firm earth. And I could _feel _it. _

_I could feel the shifting, roll of my toes in the soft grass beneath, my hot breath blowing up into the small arch of my nose, my chest rising, rising and falling – _

And fingers! _I had _fingers! _Small, thin, wriggly things. I started giggling, wiggling them about, bending them into strange shapes in the light of the grey-blue sky with absolute _wonderment_, the dangling, old, splattered bag tangled around the width of my wrist left to haunt like a ghost, unimportant in the face of the new findings of my being._

"_Oh, oh, oh – fingers! Oh, fingers! Oh look at them wriggle! What am I meant to do with _these _little things_?_" I squealed with a loose burst of laughter, abject amusement colouring the tone of my voice – _

_Oh, I can speak too! And moles! I can feel them – I know I've got moles, right on my right cheek. Cute. I like those moles. Those are _perfect _moles!_

_I laughed again, bubbles of pure, unadulterated happiness rising up with the rigor and purity of _life, _and then, and then_ –

_And then then I was suddenly coughing – hacking, heaving, breathing out a burst of golden dust, which flew from my lips like a swirl of smoke or hot breath before dissipating into the cold air like the last leg of a lost dream, each golden, sparkling tendril floating away in the breeze, lost beyond, _far _beyond_,_ my grasp. _

_Oh… now that was… was… _so strange…_ my heart was pounding at double the rate it _should_, fast, so fast, _too fast_. I should be passed out, I should be palpitating on the floor, I should be di – _

_And… and then I finally noticed…_

_No, no, not _one_, not at _double_ the rate... Oh. _Oh_. I – I have two hearts. _Two hearts. _Is that – is that normal? Two hearts? It _felt _right, but for some reason, for some absolutely bizarre, crazy, _loony_ reason, amongst the shining blades of deep green grass, pearly grey skies and rolling hills it seemed_… _wrong._ Alien. _Not… not_ possible.

_Wait… where was I? _

"Earth… the boring-est, most _droll _place on the planet"

_Suddenly I was caving in on myself in pain, my mind and the space behind my eyes exploding in a rain shower of painful lights that split against the side of my consciousness like stars cracking against the fortitude of my thoughts, large meteors alighting in a storm of aggression on re-entry, falling, falling, speeding through the sky of my body, tiny flaming arrows piercing the tender flesh of my mind, burning – _burning_. I let out a low, fragile, weakened groan of pain and suddenly – suddenly I knew – _

_I knew _nothing. _Memories, I should have those, no matter how new I felt – I _knew_ I should have those – but no, no, no. _Nothing_. My mind was absent, bereft of something, solitary so, so, so – _

_Alone. _Silent. _It was all too quiet. _

_What… who… Who _am_ I? _

_Slowly, in a mess of cluttered, tangled confusion I stumbled away from that small nook of grass that I had been cradled by for – what I realized – had been three days, traipsing like a giraffe learning how to walk for the first time, one foot in front of the other, one step at a time, moving in a slow crawl onwards. Towards. Yes, towards._

_Towards the little, sleepy town ahead, a small sign advertising its name to the world with a kind of pride that reflected the _"droll" _towns noble nature, despite the characteristics of its tired façade. _

Leadworth.

…

_I was greeted by gentle, curving slabs of grey, slated stone, carving into the green lawn of the frozen town in rivers of dull, uniform curbs. Lining the street were elegant, old vintage-styled homes straight from the 19__th__ Century, deep brown support beams crossing across the cream face of the buildings like an intricate spider web, capped by a slanted roof of some half-decayed, rusted material which cuts the bright pearl sky like the tip of a spearhead. Shining, elaborate lamp-posts lined the cement road forking off to my left, falling down a narrow decline into the lower parts of the town, and bordered by the decrepit remains of some old structure that had for so many years fought against the weary qualities of time. The road was coupled to its other side by a sharp drop to the small parish bellow, obstructed by the abrasive and jagged lines of a rock-laden, solid railing – a barrier. _

_Ahead of me stood the center of the town, bordered by small, unenthused coffee shops offering little other excitement than a few green and white umbrellas, that in the case of rain would protect the few customers they had from the downpour, and a few flowers in barrels – but fair play to them, I suppose. _They got strange tastes here._ Huddled into the side of one such coffee shop, its windows dimmed and curtained by dust evident of non-use, was a small post office, It's deep blue door in a constant flourish of opening and closing, the patrons of the joint tumbling in and out like a temperate, flitty storm in an effort to connect their tiny, little village, almost like a separate world, with the greater, more exciting life that bustled beyond the rolling green hills running off into the distance. _

_Small, inelegant wooden benches dotted the green paths like a weed amongst flowers, obscuring the perfect green carpet that flowed across the floor like a rippling sea of vibrant earth and little, crumpled leaves, which amongst the ocean of soothing grass, appeared like a splattering of fish. The schools merged into the ground below like melted snow, with the light speckles of brown further contrasting the vibrant, youthful green of the dream-like blades rooted into the earth. The vibrant red phone box to my right rose out of the earth as one would imagine fire would rise from an ocean, so alien was it to the surrounding world which seemed to be besides this one proof bereft of modern pleasures, and frozen in a time long past. At one end sat a small, barely-there duck pond, the water's surface still, calm and frozen like the rest of the town in a moment of full and utter peace. It reflected like a mirror the cold, hard, grey hue of the sky, looking to any outsider as if it was made of untouched liquid silver. It was definitely a duck pond, yes. For some reason the space demanded that title, despite the absence of the reason for its identifier. But no, that didn't make any sense._

_If this was a duck pond, then where were the ducks?_

_For some reason my head started its baleful wail again, the pounding, pounding, pounding of the thick, nauseating pain shattering like falling, raining, dripping stars – throbbing, throbbing and throbbing again like an onslaught of meteors upon the earth of my mind, like a typhoon of eternal neuron implosions grinding against the shell of my sanity. _

_Pounding, throbbing_, hurting,_ over and over and over, in time with the beats of my _hearts._ And whilst everything else exploded, disintegrated, reformed and reshaped, two things – just _two_ – remained. _

Silence_. The silence._

_And the empty void. _

"_My dear, are you alright? What a right state you're in! Can I help you, dear? Hello?" Breathed an old, tired woman's voice, scraping upon the air with a shake, fragile with age and yet holding a rough edge that was both compassionate and reprimanding – warm._

_My body jolted, shoulders frozen in hunch, my hands fisted tightly at my side. One breath. Two. _

_And then the silence was broken. _

But the void remained_._

_I turned slowly, shakily, nervously - the quiet, calm timbre flowing from her lips having broken the spell of my pain – _illness –_ and returned me once more to the friendly clutches of a peaceful reality – a reality absent of exploding stars, and fire writhing behind my eyelids. _

_There stood the genteel form of an elderly woman, her short, cropped white hair smoothly curving into the sides of her old, wrinkled face, the years etched somewhat gently into her skin as a form of proof of the years she'd walked the Earth, no matter how unwanted. Her bright blue eyes reflected a lively, maternal character, particularly evident in the way she arched her eyebrows upwards, as if caught in surprise by the audacity of whoever had left me in such a sorry state. Her lipstick covered mouth pursed in confusion and worry, further evidenced through her solid stance, which although despite the cold, remained firmly on the ground she presently stood, her eyes resolutely on me, with nothing else to warm her on such a chilly day but her cardigan. _

_That reminds me, I didn't seem to feel the cold as much. How strange!_

_But no. That's irrelevant. Woman. There's a woman. A woman! _

"_Hello!" I crowed, swooning slightly to the side, as if the wind suddenly pressed heavily against me in some kind of test of strength._

"_Oh, didn't expect that" I mumbled, correcting myself. "Umm… I'm not really sure whether I'm alright. I, ah… seem to be a little lost, or – or… something. Well, actually, I really just don't have a place to go. Never done this before, you see" I rambled, stumbling upon words like they were foreign – like I had not spoken them in years, no, _decades. _For some reason beyond the void of my knowledge the inflection felt wrong, the structure of the words felt… felt – as if they should be smoother, more rounded, more melodic – completely different. But upon inspection I could find no words to match these intonations, no language that would allow what I could almost feel rolling off my tongue, which I knew – which I _knew_, I knew – like an old friend… _

_The old woman instantly looked sympathetic, as if for the first time something made sense in this strange green world. She looked a little apprehensive for a moment, as if weighing her options, the clock ticking, ticking, ticking, moments slipping by – before she spoke again. _

"_Oh my, you poor young thing, running away – or were you kicked out dear? Can't be more than in your twenties though can you! Never mind dear, never mind. Don't seem to have much though, do you? You've been ran through your paces getting here! Don't you worry my girl, I'll handle you. Come on dear, come on – if we spend another moment out here in the cold, especially when you're wearing such thin a dress – we'll catch our deaths for sure!"_

_And in the next moment I was being led away, deep into the den of some unknown, new world. A world of humans, all living and breathing together, hunting, nursing, breeding in a frenzied circle of life that seemed so fantastical and amazing, although I wasn't quite certain why._

_Humans. Single hearted creatures, if the steady, slow pulse of the woman's wrist was any indication. Just… just one._

_So… I – I'm _not_ normal, then…_

"_Now hurry, no dawdling!"_

_I let out a fluttering, joyful laugh – it's deep, melodious qualities resounding in the air like the whisper of a burning star, unrestrained by the confusion and brevity of the last moment, and almost ceaselessly warm. _

"_Yes, yes, of course, umm…" I uttered amusedly, losing momentum as I realized that the kind, special, wonderful, _fantastic_ woman before me was still yet to identify herself._

"_Oh!" she crowed, as if caught unwittingly from behind, "how terribly rude of me! Yes, yes, well my name is Irene Angelo, although I suppose the young ones do have such a fondness for calling me so _formally – _Mrs Angelo, how eloquent! Oh, but how stuffy too. Well I suppose it doesn't matter, dear. Either as you like"_

_She let out a light chuckle, opening up the door of one of the uniform, white-coloured nineteenth century homes, warmth, like crawling, oozing honey, dripping down the steps and onto the bare cheeks of my face, kissing it in the most intimate form of welcome I could imagine. With a pat on my shoulder she ushered me inside, into a realm of such human beauty I couldn't help but grin – dimples rising up on the sides of my face as I stared in wonderment, hands reaching, searching, desperate to explore this new environment. _

_Upon seeing this Mrs Angelo grinned, the crinkles around her eyes bunched up in an assortment of smiles, another show of amusement amongst her many tell-tale signs of happiness. She gently led me to the warn, deep brown leather couch, a small pillow of exuberant and cherished memories written into the surface of its hide in the long, deep creases of the material, and the small wrinkles, that like Mrs Angelo's, revealed the many years of life chauffeured in a merry dance through the room in the shape of a grandmother and her grandson. She patted my knee with a soft chuckle, before shuffling off to the pantry in search of some cherished tea bags, which, as she professed, "will surely cure you well of the cold!" _

_From the other room I could hear the soft clink of china against china, of wood against wood, of metal against metal, and soft humming. Then, words._

"_Well now my dear, you can stay for a little while I suppose. I'm afraid I don't have much room though, with my lump of a boy Jeff – goodness gracious where is that boy, he told me he'd come for lunch! – so I'll have to arrange something else for longer stay. And you are staying, aren't you? Can't have a young thing like you running off on your own. I'll ask Amy's aunt the next time I see her – or maybe just Amy. That aunt of hers – what a codfish! Yes, yes I'll have some words with that dear Amelia Pond. Plenty of room in that old, big house of hers – I suppose it would be a reprieve for her, that poor girl. That house is full of whisperings, and she's all by herself" she muttered, her compassionate words ringing like a warning bell around the room, as if it was important, had some meaning – one that I didn't know. _

_Shaking my head, I voiced my approval._

"_That would be lovely"_

_She waltzed back into the room, an old, antique tray in hand, a collage of golden swirls and pearl, peach accents curling up the handle and to its underside like an intricate rose blooming from the wood. Setting down the china tea cups, overladen with dark, steaming tea, she took her own seat, reclining in a sensitive fashion, and yet oozing with a confidence that promised strength and composure. With a small smile, her own tea cup sitting at the juncture of her pursed, painted lips, she asked me a question – _the_ question – that would define my new existence, my new life, upon the human earth. _

"_Now, girl, by what name should I call you?" _

_With a start I frowned, my mouth pressed open in a surprised, soundless whelp as I struggled to find an answer to her question. Because when I blinked, upon the moor, for the first time – it was just that, the first time. Because when I felt the rolling, tumbling pools of nourished green grass beneath my toes, wiggled my fingers in new-born excitement, laughed, giggled and tumbled about in childish ecstasy – they were all firsts. At least, all the firsts I could remember._

_So what, then? Who was I? Why was I _here_? _

_I squirmed, concentrating on the one thing which, for some strange reason I _knew, _was a remnant of something – something beyond the tireless dark of the void – and I searched it. Something had to be there. It had to have retained some semblance of the life I once led, the one now lain in shattered, closed off worlds around the vast space of my mind, lost, lost, lost – some answer that could – that could at least give me one thing, just one. _

_A name._

_Mrs Angelo crinkled her forehead in confusion, but did not deter me as I searched that mangled, soiled, ruined, minging bag for… for something._

_And then I found it, one tiny, thin, card shaped wisp of a paper. Blank – empty – void – like the hollowness of my mind, like the trailing shadow behind me, haunting my every step – _silent.

_I bit my lip in desperate frustration, about to let it drop back into the desolate remnants of my past, to – _

_But then smoky shadows started to take form, building, building up into inky strips of words, hard, detached and undisputable. I stared at it, my hearts caught up somewhere in my throat._

_I swallowed._

"_My name… my name is Reylah Mallard"_

_And I was there, with Mrs Angelo, in a small, quaint old house, in a tired old town called Leadworth, in a world of humans – a world of the single hearted. And that was fine. That was alright. For one moment it didn't matter that my mind was so empty, that the shadows of my life lay in decrepit fragments, that I was _alone_, that my thoughts were so silent, that I had _two hearts_. _

_Because I had one thing. Just one._

_I had a name. _

…

I sighed, my breath leaving me in a rattling show of fragility I was so desperate to hide from the bustling, busy, tireless world outside. It was hard, sometimes, living in this world of the single hearted. The old, closed-minded residents of the town were loath to welcome such a strange, mysterious girl, especially when her only form of I.D., besides showing her name and relevant information, happened to display that she also enjoyed a good cuppa when it was cold out, especially if the old coots of the town were being buggering codfishes. Well, that didn't _really_ go over so well, although it did win the respect of a young Amelia Pond that first month. But that's irrelevant, _really_. I had – I had absolutely no power or sway over that bloody bit of paper, and – and being glared at so often – the coots could hold a grudge, _goddamnit_ – must be absolutely horrid for the health!

I was torn out of my musings by a resounding, booming voice which tore through the house in a desperate flurry of words I could not discern through the plaster and brick. With a start I dropped the sheet of paper, my hearts picking up speed in pure, unadultered panic – what was going _on?_ – and leapt across the room in a flurry of graceless limbs and short pirouettes as I skirted around towers of books and piles of paper which still littered the floor in pools of flowing text. The voice – it reverberated solidly through my heart like a gong, like a sign, ringing round and round and round in a horrid tangle of confused _emotion_ through every bone, every ligament in my body as my mind started to fog, a strange buzzing breaking the shell of my mind before fading, dissipating into the sea of despair of the voice still calling outside of the room. Oh, I was torn – torn and afraid and – and completely _lost –_ but I kept my haste, pulling the old, dented knob of the door in a desperate dance of jerks as my hearts leapt out of my chest, beating harder, harder, harder. Something was _wrong_ – I could almost feel it frozen, like a blanket of _sickness,_ in the frigid air.

And then I had a horrid thought – the _worst _thought.

What if it was Amy calling? What if she was hurt? What if – what if it was that strange door, that horrible, horrible door that whispered, whispered horrible, horrible things – that no one, especially dear, sweet, reckless Amelia Pond, could _see. _

Mrs Angelo's words, the ones she'd uttered those three years ago, played on repeat in my mind.

"_That house is full of whisperings, and she's all by herself"_

As I pulled the door open in a frenzy of sick thoughts I heard the shout again, so, so desperate, and then the reverberating sound of something being smashed _hard,_ and then – then the sound of something hitting the wooden floorboard below, like a star crashing against the hull of the earth. No. No. It… couldn't be…

"Amy?! AMY!" I screamed entering the hallway, my breath frozen somewhere in my chest next to my arctic hearts, caught up in the angry, tousled tangle of a single, horrifying moment. I swallowed.

Before me stood Amelia Pond, hair in a frantic, cluttered mess of flaming locks, her eyes wide in an eternal second of shock, cricket bat poised in mid-air. I stared. And stared.

There was a man, some strange, weird looking man with a head of floppy dark hair… and he was unconscious. Knocked out. _By a bat._

I let out a nervous, crazed, hysterical laugh.

"Oh, Amy, my dear, dear Amy Pond – What have you fucking _done?!"_

...

**A/N Thanks for reading folks, please review – reviews are my bread and butter!**


End file.
